"You're ruining my life!"

Ava was surely in rare form this evening.  As a 3-year-old, she goes through her range of moods, but generally she's happy, energetic, extremely humorous, insightful, bright, and just so dang cute!

This evening she graced us with her after-dinner entertainment - which included her rendition of several Rihanna and Nicki Minaj songs, sung through a pencil microphone.  Just when you felt it was time to applaud, she would abruptly put her hand up and say, "Wait, I'm not done yet". We did this song and dance for about twenty minutes until she gave us permission to leave the table.

After dinner, Ava and I had a discussion about her birthday that's coming up in a few months.  It went a little like this...

"Mommy, for my birthday I want high heels, Chris Brown..."
"Honey, you can't have Chris Brown for your birthday."
"But I love him!  I want Chris Brown, Usher, Nicki Minaj, Bruno Mars..."

I love how the mind of a 3-year-old works.

After a little play time with her sisters, I let the girls know that it was time to put on their pajamas, brush their teeth, and get ready for bed. Maddie and Savannah were very compliant and responded with a simple, "Okay Mommy".  Ava on the other hand had quite the meltdown.

"Mommy, this is horrible!" she whined as her body folded and collapsed to the floor.  "You're ruining my life!"

All I could do was laugh - where in the world did she get that from? It was too hilarious.

I knew that she was extremely tired and was fighting sleep.  In her effort to prove to me that she wasn't ready for bed, she came out of her room every 15 minutes with something new to share.  First it was a wardrobe change from her pajamas to her bathing suit.  Then it was that she had painted her nails.  Each time I quickly sent her back to bed and firmly told her to go to sleep.  The pièce de résistance was when she announced that she had put lotion on her Barbie horse.  I had to see this one.  Sure enough, she had shellacked A+D ointment all over this plastic horse!

Now, I could have easily yelled, but all I could do was laugh.  "Ava, why did you do this?" I asked.  "Because I wanted to make my horse soft" she replied with a big smile.  So after explaining that you cannot put lotions, oils, ointments, etc. on dolls and toys, she very sweetly apologized and went back to bed.  I, on the other hand, spent the next 20 minutes shampooing this horse in Dawn, trying to get the grease out.  Oh, the life of a mom!